LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
"AMERICAN " LAND-TAXES.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] Sin, —Perhaps the fate of Mr. Lloyd George's Budget will not be settled when this letter reaches you, and a word of comment upon Mr. George L. Fox's criticism of your attitude (Spectator, January 8th) may still be timely. It may be premised that there are no Federal Land-taxes in the American Republic, nor indeed any direct taxes on per- sonalty (either capital or income). It seems to require a change in the Constitution to authorise this, for there is now pending for ratification by the requisite number of States (three-quarters of them) an amendment permitting Congress to tax incomes. Each of the forty-six States has its own system of taxation, and I think it is a fact that in every one of them there is a tax on the capital value both of land and personal property, and that to effectuate this there is an exceedingly crude and unscientific system of valuation made from time to time (in the case of personalty, largely by guesswork). But to draw an analogy between the Land- taxes which " are enforced by statute law " in the United States and those which are proposed by Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Fox ought to name a State in which there is an Income- tax imposed upon all of its citizens in respect of all their property (real and personal), and in which State there is also imposed upon such of its citizens as happen to own the title of lands certain other taxes upon such lands, as, for instance, a tax upon an increased value of land, a tax upon royalties derived from minerals mined from land, &c., such Land- taxes being in addition to the taxes imposed on the annual capital value of their lands and personalty. I know very little of the taxation systems of the several States except those of New York and Rhode Island, but from my general knowledge of American legislation, I venture to doubt whether a tax on increment value of land (earned or unearned) or on mining royalties has crept into the system of any one of them as an addition to taxes on income, or as an addition to taxes on the capital value of land or personalty. Hence, as " an average landowner" in the State of Rhode Island until very recently, I have not been made to "shake [my] sides with laughter" by any of the criticisms of Mr. Lloyd George's Land-taxes which I have read in the Spectator.
Sometime Lieutenant-Governor of Rhode Island.
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